From the Editors    

"Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible,  so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer."

Plutarch, Moralia
 

We hope that your words are not frozen this winter, and that you will get involved in some of TSS's many activities by volunteering to help on committees, report to the newsletter, or many other opportunities for sharing our knowledge.  In the wake of the Tsunami disaster, we sit and contemplate what must have happened to their libraries.  Can you imagine having that amount of water rush through your business, office, or library?  Needless to say their information needs are being met on an emergency basis, mainly by connection to the Web on latptops set up in various locations.  All the more reason to be certain that what contributions we make to the web are useful and easy to use for consumers.

There are some interesting workshops listed below, as well as information on the dissolution of HSOCLCUG (can you say that 5 times in succession?).  Also a new independent reading program for MLA members to receive CE credits! Nothing like getting credit for reading!  Do you think medical fiction would qualify????

Connie & Jan                                                                                                       

Connie Machado Head of Cataloging Rowland Medical Library University of Mississippi Medical Center cmachado@rowland.umsmed.edu

Jan Cox Head Librarian IU School of Dentistry Library Indianapolis, Indiana jcox2@iupui.edu

From the Chair

This SOONER sends you warmest wishes from chilly Oklahoma City!  Established in 1889 Oklahoma City grew out of a barren prairie to become not only the state's capital but a state capital sitting above one of the national's largest oil fields.  Oklahoma City remains the largest stocker and feeder cattle market in the world.  The MLA Technical Services Section founded almost a century after Oklahoma City also grew from a small group of stalwart pioneer visionaries to approximately 150 members, who serve as this section's knowledge and expertise rich oil field.  Although TSS members have been challenged by an increasing array of diverse service demands, the section has continued to harness its members' expertise to extend knowledge throughout the membership and beyond.  TSS's flexibility and outreach capability has enabled the section to grow while continuing to articulate and represent the concerns of technical services librarians in medical libraries.  As you will see from the 2005 program planning update and other reports in this issue, TSS members have been leaving the backroom and reaching beyond their departmental walls to share what they know and enrich services.

This year TSS has been invited to reach out further and assume some of the Health Science OCLC User's Group's roles, especially the OCLC liaison role.  The Health Science OCLC User's Group (HSOCLCUG) after 30 years, is going to disband in 2005.  The HSOCLCUG, like TSS, is a gushing oil field rich in individual and group knowledge and expertise.  I want to take this opportunity to encourage each TSS member to read the Ad-Hoc Task Force on HSOCLCUG article written by Mary Holt and Dan Kniesner.  Mary and Dan provide backgroud information concerning the Task Force charge/objectives and rational for HSOCLCUG's future dissolution and HSOCLCUG's historic objectives.

In addition to the HSOCLCUG matter, section members have been working very hard to meet the section's 2004/2005 goals.  A heartfelt thanks to all of the committee members who have contributed to the profession through your section committee work.  Below you will find an abbreviated form of the section's mid-year report.

Best wishes for a happy season and prosperous New Year.

Judy C. Wilkerson, Head of Serials Services
The Robert M. Bird Health Sciences Library
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
P.O. Box 26901
Oklahoma City, OK 73190-3046
judy-wilkerson@ouhsc.edu
(405) 271-2285 ext. 48757, or (405) 271-3297 (fax) 

Hear Ye!  Hear Ye!  Seeking Nominations

TSS members are invited to submit nominations for section officers to Marianne Burke, Chair of the TSS Nominating Committee. The following 3 positions needing nominations:  Vice-chair/chair elect; Nominee for MLA Nominating Committee; Representative to Section Council.   Please have your suggestions in by January 21, 2005.

Marianne Burke, Chair, TSS Nominating Committee
Marianne.Burke@uvm.edu

      TSS MEMBERSHIP NEEDS YOU 

          It’s TSS Membership Renewal Time!         

All memberships in the Technical Services Section of MLA expired December 31, 2004.  

 

Renew Today! 

Visit http://www.mlanet.org/joinmla/index.html to access MLA’s online application or renewal form.

     TSS Program Update: 2005 Annual Conference, San Antonio, Texas  

The Technical Services Section Program Committee has completed its work of reviewing abstracts submitted for the 2005 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.  

The TSS is the primary sponsor for the session:  “Educate, Enrich, and Enhance: Technical Services Internal Educational Outreach/Eduque, Enriquezca y Realce: Extendiendo la Educacion Interna de los Servicios Tecnicos”.   We have selected four papers on the topic:  

1)       “Innovative Roles for Technical Services Librarian:  Extending Our Reach”

2)       “On Beyond the OPAC:  Repurposing ILS Data for Web-based Access Tools”

3)       “Beyond the ‘Back Room’:  Technical Services Staff as Integral Partners in Providing Library Services”

4)      “Coming Out of the Back Room:  Technical Services Breaks Loose”

We have agreed to co-sponsor two other sessions.  The session organized by the Cancer Section has the title, “Impact of Open Access (OA) Publishing” is co-sponsored by Collection Development Research and Technical Services Sections.  This session will focus on the impact OA has had on collection development, technical services workflows, research efforts, clinical care, and journal rankings.  The third session entitled "Medical Information Diversity: Results of an MLA Survey," is sponsored by Medical Informatics with co-sponsorship from Medical Library Education and Technical Services Sections.

The Program Committee welcomes input for hot topics and topics you would like to see covered at the Business Meeting.  You may send your suggestions to Nancy Burford (mailto: nburford@medlib.tamu.edu), Chris Ewing (mailto: cewing@usc.edu) or  Jan Cox (mailto:jcox2@iupui.edu)      

Jan Cox, TSS Chair Elect
2005 Program Committee Chair
jcox2@iupui.edu
317-274-5207

Opportunities for Professional Development

The purpose of this column is to list opportunities which may be of interest to our members.  While the column is not intended to be a comprehensive listing, the compiler/editor welcomes information on continuing education opportunities for possible inclusion in future editions of the column.  Although some of the courses listed below may indicate the awarding of continuing education units, only those specifically indicated as being MLA-approved have received prior approval from the Medical Library Association.

Winter ' 05 Learning Opportunities

The MLA CE Committee announces a new program for members:  The Independent Reading Program!  It is open to MLA members, who read selected articles from the Journal of the Medical Library Association and receive CE contact hours (1 hour per article).  The first article: "Quality Markers and Use of Electronic Journals in an Academic Health Sciences Library," JMLA, July 2004.  The second article: "How Much Effort Is Needed to Keep Up with the Literature Relevant for Primary Care?" JMLA, October 2004.  Simply write a brief analysis of the article, answering specific questions, and submit online, by mail or fax.  Cost is $15 per article analyzed.  Questions may be directed to Debra Cavanaugh mlapd3@mlahq.org   More information:  http://www.mlanet.org/education/irp/articles.html  What an easy way to build up AHIP credits!

We’d love to hear from you regarding past and future classes, sessions, or workshops that you’ve attended or would like to see posted here for the future.  Feel free to write a summary of interesting classes you have attended for Technical Trends.

Your CE Committee,

Sue Trombley          Lynne Bowman                    Kristin Sawyer                    Joan Gregory
TSS CE Chair          lbowman@email.uky.edu   ksawyer555@yahoo.com     joang@lib.med.utah.edu
susant@ahsl.arizona.edu

Calendar of Events

 January - February - March
Planning Ahead
 

January

ALA Midwinter, Boston, MA, January 14-19, 2005

Meeting information: http://www.ala.org/ala/eventsandconferencesb/midwinter/2005/home.htm

"Codified Innovations:  Data Standards and Their Useful Applications" ALCTS/SS Symposium, Friday, Jan. 14, 2005

Complete description and online registration:  http://www.ala.org/ala/alcts/alctspubs/alctsnewsletter/v15n6/symposia.htm

BCR Cataloging Workshops, January 19-20, 2005, Manhattan, KS

Three cataloging workshops are being offered at the Manhattan Public Library, Jan. 19-20.  Registration information and details may be found:  http://bcr.org/training/workshops/  The instructor is Regan Harper, http://bcr.org/about/staff/rwh-bio.html

"Searching WorldCat for Cataloging" Jan. 19, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

"Cataloging Using the OCLC Connexion Client Interface" Jan. 20, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

"OCLC WorldCat Resource Sharing Basics" Jan. 21, 9 a.m.-4 p.m


MLA Webcast "Tips for Negotiating Electronic Licenses" January 26, 2005, 1-2:30 p.m. CST

The goals of this Webcast are to:

• illustrate a librarian and publisher negotiating specific clauses of a license agreement and developing a mutually agreeable contract
• provide practical tips to those who deal with licensing agreements
• provide useful negotiation tips for those who deal with licensing agreements

For more information:  http://www.mlanet.org/education/distance_ed/licensing/index.html

LCSH for Beginners, NEFLIN Workshop, January 27-28, 2005

The Northeast Florida Library Information Network (NEFLIN) is hosting this popular cataloging workshop, Thursday-Friday, January 27-28, 2005, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.  Register online:  http://www.neflin.org/ce/registrationInstructions.htm or email registration:  register@neflin.org and include class name,  your name, library name, address, phone and fax, email address and membership category.  Directions and local accommodations information:  http://www.neflin.org/about/findUS.htm

Document Imaging and Document Management, Archive Builders workshop, January 28-30, 2005

A three day course available:  Los Angeles, Conference Center at Cathedral Plaza, Conference Room 5, at 555 West Temple St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, (213) 680-5273. (Repeating April 29-May 1, same location).  Detailed course description and enrollment information can be found:  http://www.archivebuilders.com/abcourses.html

February

NLM Workshops (FREE), Arizona Health Sciences Library, Tucson, AZ, February 14-15, 2005

The Arizona Health Sciences Library is hosting two workshops for librarians, library students, or individuals who want to improve their health information seeking skills.  Email Mari Stoddard with any questions you may have:  stoddard@ahsl.arizona.edu

        PubMed - February 14, 2005

        NLM Gateway & ClinicalTrials.gov Workshop - February 15, 2005

To register, visit:  http://nnlm.gov/mar/online/request.html, select Feb. 14 and/or Feb. 15

March

"Partnering for Public Health: Information, Librarians, and the Public Health Workforce" MLA Teleconference,            
March 9, 2005, 1 p.m. CST

More information about the teleconference is available: http://www.mlanet.org/education/telecon/publichealth/goal

SURA/ViDe Digital Video Workshop, March 28-31, 2005, Georgia Institute of Technology 

"Facing Tomorrow's Problems Today: Best Practices and New Techniques for Internet-Based Video" The 7th annual SURA/VIDE Conference, March 28-31, 2005, Global Learning & Conference Center, Georgia Institute of Technology:  http://www.vide.net/conferences/spr2005.  Two workshops are being offered on March 31: one on the delivery of high-quality, bandwidth-intensive video-over-IP; the second focuses on the development of metadata for digital video collections.  There is also a training session led by Internet2, for I2 Commons Site Coordinators.  Registration fees are required for all workshops.

"Introduction to Molecular Biology Information Resources" NCBI, March 9-11, 2005, Bethesda, MD

The first of 4 sessions for this topic is being held at the National Library of Medicine.  This course is approved for 20 MLA CE credit hours.  There is no cost for the workshop, but participants must cover travel, hotel, and meals.  See below for the future locations of this course.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Class/MLACourse/

April 4-6, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN

June 13-15, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Nov. 2-4, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD

Planning Ahead

Medical Library Association, San Antonio, TX, May 14-19, 2005

"Futuro Magnifico! Celebrating our Diversity!"  http://www.mlanet.org/am/am2005/index.html

  NASIG 20th Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN, May 19-22, 2005

"Roaring into our 20's" http://www.nasig.org/conference/2005.htm

SLA Annual Conference, Toronto, Ontario, CA, June 5-8, 2005

"We're Talking IMPACT"  http://www.sla.org/content/Events/conference/ac2005/index.cfm

ALA Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, June 23-29, 2005

http://www.ala.org/ala/eventsandconferencesb/annual/2005a/home.htm

21st Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning, Madison, Wisconsin, August 3-5, 2005

The Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning is sponsored by
©University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Organized by: The Graduate Program in Continuing and Vocational Education

For more information: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/

2004 LITA National Forum, Sheraton Westport Hotel, San Jose, CA, Sept. 29-Oct. 2, 2005

"The Ubiquitous Web: Personalization, Portability, and On-line Collaboration"

For more information: http://www.ala.org/ala/lita/litaevents/litanationalforum2005sanjoseca/2005Forum.htm

Medical Library Association 

Click here for descriptions of all these MLA courses: http://www.mlanet.org/education/web/web_courses.html

Sue Trombley.
MLA/TSS CE Chair
susant@ahsl.arizona.edu

North American Serials Interest Group 2004 Annual Conference

NASIG officers for 2004/05 are: President, Steve Savage, San Diego State University, and Vice-President/President-Elect, Mary Page, Rutgers University, Secretary: Elizabeth Parang, Pepperdine University, and continuing as Treasurer, Denise Novak, Carnegie Mellon University.  Members-at-large of the executive board are: Jill Emery, University of Houston, Beverley Geer, YBP Library Services, Judy Luther, Informed Strategies, Kevin Randall, Northwestern University, Stephanie Schmitt, Yale Law School, and Joyce Tenney, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 

The 19^th annual NASIG conference "Growth, Creativity, and Collaboration: Great Visions on a Great Lake,” was held June 17-20, 2004 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

The vision sessions (new name for general plenary sessions) were a little different this year.  The first one, “The Role of Libraries in the World; Role of the World in Libraries: An Interview with an Author” was in the format of an interview of Matthew Battles (author of Library: An Unquiet History) by Adrian Alexander, Executive Director of the Greater Western Library Alliance.  The second vision session, “What's the Big Deal?” featured presentations by Kenneth Frazier, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries and Loretta Ebert, director of Rensselaer Research Libraries.  Frazier spoke of the complexity of these arrangements and pointed out that they do a disservice to libraries by weakening university presses and making our collections less diverse.  Ebert described her statewide public-private consortium (Partners in Information and Innovation) and discussed the advantages of collaboration.  The final vision session, “Alternative Scholarly Publishing” was presented by Heather Joseph, President and COO of BioOne, and John Tagler, Vice President Account Development and Channel Marketing, Elsevier.  Joseph presented an overview of the factors that have brought about the development of new models for publishing and disseminating scholarly information.  She spoke of the commercialization of material not previously treated as a commodity (scholarly information), and the strain that electronic technology has placed on smaller publishers.  She also pointed out that that same expensive electronic technology now allows researchers to present video, datasets, and other kinds of non-textual information.  Tagler emphasized the value that publishers add to the scholarly communication process, such as priority of research and dissemination of an author’s claims, an independent peer review process, and archiving research results. 

There were a number of sessions where electronic resource management systems and methods were discussed.  Many libraries are using Serials Solutions or TDNet to manage full-text journals in databases, SFX or other link resolvers for full-text linking, and a number of libraries have started to use Innovative Interfaces’ new module for electronic resource management.  The consensus seemed to be that commercial electronic resource management systems are being developed and are improving, and within a year or two will be available with most of the features that librarians need.   

Two presenters, Alfred Kraemer of the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Abigail Bordeaux of Binghamton University, offered a well-organized and thorough discussion about obtaining, organizing, and utilizing e-journal (and print journal) usage statistics. 

There were also some interesting sessions discussing standards of various kinds—ISSN, and how it can be revised to meet the needs of the various communities who make use of it (see the ISO working group’s web page at http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/wg5.htm); ONIX for Serials as a standard for the exchange of serials subscription information (see http://www.editeur.org/onixserials.html for more information). 

Beginning with the 2003 Annual Conference, copies of conference presentations and handouts are made available online for the use of NASIG members.  Although it is no substitute for attendance at the meeting, it is a terrific benefit of membership! 

The 2005 conference will be held in Minneapolis, directly following the MLA annual meeting, from May 19-22, 2005. Information about the conference, and a call for proposals is available at http://www.nasig.org/public/2005proposals.htm 

This report is informational and requires no action by the Board of Directors.                                    

Maggie Wineburgh-Freed
MLA liaison to NASIG